Mom wonders what’s wrong with her precious little boy. You’re past marrying age and she wants grandkids, darn it.
And then there are your buddies who flash pictures of their fairy-tale weddings and their shiny-faced, tow-headed kids.
But neither of those comes close to the abuse by your annoying ex, who maintains the only way you’ll find another girlfriend is to pay someone.
What a novel idea. If it were only as easy as throwing cash around to get your mom, your ex and those nosy so-and-sos off your back.
Well, now it is. At Fake Internet Girlfriend (www.fakeinternetgirlfriend.com) you can buy a phony main squeeze. In return, you will have a gal, whom you will never meet, but who will communicate with you on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
The company charges $250 a month, with a three-month minimum, for the basic package. That includes a phony girlfriend opening a Facebook account so she can publicly communicate with you, making up to two public phone calls (such as leaving a message with your administrative assistant to return her call) or leaving voice mails for others to overhear.
The package, according to the website, also promises to deliver up to 10 friendly (nothing sex-related) text messages a month. Pay more, and your fake girlfriend will even participate with you in online games such as World of Warcraft.
“Sometimes people need to rent a fake girlfriend for their job,” reads the company’s website. “Some employers are biased toward single folks. Often times employers give preference to people in more serious relationships so it can benefit a person to have a fake online girlfriend they can say they are in a long-distance relationship with.
“Sometimes people hire a fake Internet girlfriend to make an ex-girlfriend jealous. In fact, we get a lot of clients for this reason.
“Sometimes people don’t want to hear it from their family, they want to avoid the drama altogether of the never-ending questions about dating so they simply employ a fake Internet girlfriend so their family will stop hounding them about finding the right girl.
“Sometimes people want to keep certain aspects of their personal life, well, personal and private. The one way to do this is to hire a fake Internet girlfriend for appearances’ sake. It avoids all the pesky little questions about why you’ve never been seen dating a girl before.”
The site doesn’t say how many men have signed up, and an email requesting comment was not returned, but elsewhere on the site is a job posting offering $10 an hour to women willing to be fake girlfriends.
The company doesn’t have a comparable service for women looking for fake boyfriends. Which makes a person wonder — are guys really that desperate?
“I cannot think of a reason so urgent that someone would need to pay someone to pose as their girlfriend,” said Amy Kuenzli, a 34-year-old single woman from Stow. “I honestly don’t understand the purpose of this, or what it’s meant to achieve. You still, at the end of the day, don’t have a girlfriend, right? So, you’ve Manti Te’o’d yourself into a corner where you have a ‘girlfriend’ no one will ever meet.”
After taking a look at the website, Cari Orris, a clinical counselor and relationship expert with a practice in Kent, said she was struck by how the women were depicted in fantasy-type photos.
“They are not like real women who walk through my practice or who I see in the grocery store,” she said.
The whole concept, she added, is a fabrication — designed to attract men who think it’s fine to lie to the world. “It’s not a good quality to have,” she added.
Maintaining a good relationship takes work. Still, Orris said, most everyone wants to have somebody in their lives. And a fabricated mate isn’t the path to happiness.
“If you put the work into it, relationships are incredibly satisfying,” Orris said.
Nothing replaces hard work and honesty in a relationship. So what should a woman do if she learns a potential boyfriend bought a fake girlfriend?
“Any woman who comes across a man who she learns has done this kind of thing, I would probably encourage her … to run in the opposite direction.”
Kim Hone-McMahan can be reached at 330-996-3742 or kmcmahan@thebeaconjournal.com.